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Artemis II Reaches Lunar Orbit & Frame-Dragging Confirmed | May 24
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Artemis II carries its crew to lunar orbit for the first time since Apollo 17, while astronomers directly confirm Einstein's frame-dragging prediction using a torn-apart star. Black hole physics and human spaceflight both hit major milestones today.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A new theoretical framework suggests Einstein-Rosen bridges don't connect two points in space. They connect two opposite directions in time.
Staying with black hole physics, because there's a second result worth pairing with that one. Astronomers have directly observed Lense-Thirring precession, the effect where a spinning black hole physically drags and twists the spacetime around it.
There's a third piece to this picture. An analysis of one hundred fifty-three gravitational wave detections has clarified how so-called intermediate-mass black holes form.
Shifting to the human spaceflight milestone that's been fifty-four years in the making. Artemis II launched successfully, carrying four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule: three from NASA, one from the Canadian Space Agency.
NASA's Psyche spacecraft completed its Mars gravity assist on May fifteenth, flying within two thousand eight hundred sixty-four miles of the planet's surface. It captured detailed crater imagery on the way through and picked up the speed boost it needed.
One situation worth monitoring. A newly active solar region designated AR4446 fired sixteen flares on May twenty-fourth alone, peaking at C five point six.
The through-line across today's briefing is that the distance between theory and confirmation in space physics is shrinking fast. Frame-dragging confirmed.
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